


since we decided to be infinite (there's no ending and there's no fear)

by starkmccall



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Bisexuality, Depression, F/M, Families of Choice, Post-Season/Series 03, both of these issues viewed through the lens of a 14 year old boy in the 80s, imax levels of projection babey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-22 08:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19663606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkmccall/pseuds/starkmccall
Summary: “Or they’ll think you’re a Satanist.” Robin says drily. “Isn’t that the common explanation for this town these days?”“You know something’s seriously messed up when Satanism seems like a less weird justification for everything that’s happened than the actual truth.” Dustin sighs. He isn’t wrong.Post-Season 3. Life goes on.





	since we decided to be infinite (there's no ending and there's no fear)

**Author's Note:**

> unfortunately mike wheeler is my number one governmentally-assigned kin so i will be depression-writing about him after every season and nobody can stop me. sorry. also probably should have flagged this in the tags but tho mike and el's relationship is certainly a part of this fic it is not the Main focus so idk. please don't be disappointed 
> 
> this definitely contains some Big Ole Spoilers for s3 so if you haven't watched it then do not read this unless you're fine with that then go off i guess
> 
> also yes i know that realistically the supercoms wouldn't have the signal strength to reach from the cabin to mike's house but since the show writers often decide that the signal abilities are dependent on what they require for the plot rather than what is probably realistic i have decided i can make the same decision thank you!
> 
> title from evergreen by broods which has always felt like a very Stranger Things song to me

Mike’s brain feels broken sometimes, which is. Well. It’s certainly fucking weird. 

He’d hoped that maybe it was grief over losing Eleven; that once she returned, the fog would be lifted, and he’d be back to normal. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly work out that way. Her being back helped, sure, but it didn’t ‘fix’ him in the way he’d wanted it to. It was an unfair burden to place on her, really; she’s just a person, despite what people seem to believe about her. Her mere presence can’t solve every issue in Mike’s head. And she’s gone now, anyway, to another town. Too far away to contact by radio, and it costs too much money to talk to her on the phone the way he’s used to talking to her. 

She was the only person he’d ever come close to talking about this with properly. They had plans that day: Mike was going to pick her up from the cabin, and then they were going to hang out with the rest of their friends. But when he had woken up that morning, everything just felt - hard. Too much. The idea of leaving his house, of having to get up and be social and act as if every neuron in his brain wasn’t screaming at him to lie back under his covers and hide from the world, nearly made him want to cry. He grabbed the Supercom from the table beside his bed, turned it on. 

“El? Are you there?”

“Mike!” It stops his heart for a moment, the realisation that someone is _that_ excited to speak to him. That El specifically is that excited to speak to him. “Hi.”

“Hi.” He replies, trying to think of what to say next. “I, uh. I can’t go out today, I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” El replies, sounding disappointed. That’s something he can’t quite believe either, the fact that anyone would ever actively want to spend time with him, let alone be disappointed when they couldn’t. “Why not?”

“I just -” He doesn’t know what to say again, because Friends Don’t Lie, and Mike doesn’t lie, not to El, and she would _understand_ , if anyone would understand weird brain shit it’s her, but. But, he still has an inherent urge to lie, to pretend he’s fine. He’s the one who helps people, he isn’t the one who needs help. “I’m having a bad day. I’m sorry.”

El pauses for a second, and Mike can almost see her frowning, trying to figure out what to do in this situation. “Do you want me to come over?”

“Oh, you don’t have to -”

“Mike.” She says, firmly, stopping his stuttering reply before it can start. “Do you _want_ me to?”

He sighs. “Yeah. I do. I really do.”

“Okay.” He hears some light shuffling, and assumes she’s getting up off her bed. “I’ll ask Hopper to drop me off at your house.”

“I’ll see you soon, then.” Mike breathes, feeling - not better, necessarily, but lighter. Less weighed down.

“See you soon, then!” El replies. Mike’s noticed she does this, subtly copies other people’s sentences or phrases, trying to integrate them into her vocabulary until they sound natural. Sometimes Mike worries that _El_ worries they’ll judge her if she messes up some of her sentences, but then again he could very easily just be projecting his own anxiety onto her.

He manages to drag himself out of bed when he hears her knock; Nancy’s out with Jonathan somewhere, and his dad’s at work, and his mom’s at the pool with Holly, so he’s the only one who could answer the door anyway. He opens the door, and she’s standing on his porch, wearing one of what seems to be an endless collection of Hopper’s plaid shirts, hair falling in waves around her face, and she’s beautiful. She looks happy, too, and Mike feels both guilty and angry at himself that he can’t quite muster up the same feeling. El must notice, because the smile on her face drops slightly.

“Are you alright?” She asks, completely unbothered by the concept of greetings and the standard societal procedure of conversations. It’s something he’s appreciated about her, always. How blunt she is. 

Mike gestures her inside. “Yeah, I’m fine, I just. Uh. I just needed a day off, you know?” 

“You said you were having a bad day.”

He blinks, sighs. “It’s not really - it’s just - it’s nothing. It’s nothing.” Half of him is yelling at him to stop, to talk to her, to explain to her what’s going on. The other half, the half that sounds suspiciously like his dad, is yelling at him to man up, to tough it out. It’s a lot, understandably, and Mike’s never been particularly good at disguising his feelings, try as he might. 

“It’s not nothing.” El looks concerned, and it makes him want to cry. Something which probably shouldn’t be a normal reaction to someone caring about him. “Mike?”

“I - okay. Can we just go down to the basement, first? I’ll talk to you, I promise, it just. It feels like a weird conversation to have standing up in my hallway.” 

“Okay.” El replies, simply, but she’s frowning a little. To her, a conversation is a conversation; the location has little impact on it, but she seems to understand that it matters to Mike. They go down to the basement, and their eyes are drawn, like they always are, to the spot where the tent used to be. Mike sits down on the couch, and El sits beside him, and takes his hand, looks at him expectantly. 

Mike takes a breath, looks back at her. “Sometimes I have - I have bad days like this. I don’t want to get out of bed, and I don’t want to talk to anyone, and I kind of just - don’t want to be a person. And sometimes it feels like I _can’t_ feel, like my emotions are just gone, and then I don’t want to be around people anyway because I’m scared I’ll say something bad to them. Sometimes it’s not just days, but weeks. Sometimes I go weeks feeling like I don’t care about my friends, or my family, or my life, or feeling like nobody cares about me, and it scares me. It’s nothing to do with them, it’s nothing really to do with me even, it’s just. It’s how my brain works. I don’t understand it. I wish it didn’t happen, but there’s nothing I can do to change it. There’s nothing I can do to fix it, permanently.” She squeezes his hand, and her face is so open, and so caring, and Mike can’t bear to look at it, so he turns his eyes to the ground. “It’s probably nothing, just hormones or something, making it more dramatic. I don’t know. I’m sorry, I know it’s unfair to say all this to you when you’re dealing with your own shit, I just -”

“I have bad days, too.” El says, interrupting him. “I have bad days. I have bad nights. I scream at Hopper. I’m grumpy to you. I’m rude to our friends.”

“Yeah, but.” You were raised in what is essentially a prison. The only human you had any consistent contact with was an abusive monster. Even when you were free, you still had to stay locked away in a cabin for a year. You have a _reason._ “People understand. Nobody judges you for that, nobody cares.”

“Mike.” She says firmly, and her tone alone forces him to look back up at her. “I understand.” Suddenly Mike is 12, walking through the woods with a girl with a shaved head, trying to find his friend, and realising that he’s developing his first crush. Mike smiles at her, weakly. It feels like all he can do. 

“I knew you would, I just - I haven’t really talked to anyone about this before.” Mike says. He and Nancy have been working on talking to each other, properly talking to each other, but this is a bridge still uncrossed. It seems wrong to burden his friends with it, when they’re going through so much of their own shit. He can’t talk to his parents, either; he never has been able to, really, but especially not about this. His dad won’t let him or his sisters around one of their uncles, and he says it’s because they had a bad argument, but all Mike knows about his uncle is that he’s had to get electroshock therapy before. Needless to say, Mike isn’t exactly keen to discuss the concerning nature of his mind with either of them any time soon. “It’s hard to talk about.” 

“I know.” El replies, and puts her other hand over his, enclosing one of his hands with both of her own. “But you let me talk to you. You let me call you in the middle of the night when I have bad dreams. You don’t get angry at me when I do something wrong. It should be the same, for you.” She smiles at him. “Joyce says that ‘all good relationships are built on healthy communication and trust.’”

“Were you talking to Joyce about us?” Mike asks slowly, taken aback.

“No.” El says, shaking her head. “Max wanted advice after she broke up with Lucas again, but I didn’t know what to say. So we went to her together.”

“Oh.” Mike’s about to ask why Max didn’t just go to her own mom, but then he realises that would be slightly hypocritical. Besides, they haven’t talked about it explicitly, but there is a general understanding that Max’s family life isn’t exactly good, to put it lightly. “Well, yeah, she’s not wrong.”

“So you’ll talk to me?” She asks, tilting her head forward slightly, imploring him. “If something’s wrong?”

Mike nods. “Yeah. I’ll talk to you.”

“Good.” El says, nodding back at him. “I told Hop. That you were having a bad day. He asked why I was coming here instead of going out.”

“What did he say?”

“He just said ‘okay’. I think he understands, too.”

Mike nods again. “Maybe don’t tell him about all of this, though. It’s not that I don’t want him to know-” He doesn’t, really, doesn’t want anyone to know, still. “- but, if he ever does know. I want it to come from me, you know?”

“Promise.” El says. It’d been complicated, trying to explain to her that not telling someone something wasn’t necessarily always the same as lying, but he trusts her more than anyone, and he knows that if she promises not to tell Hopper, she won’t tell Hopper. 

“Thanks.” He exhales slowly, a sound of relief. “You know it’s always the same for me. You can talk to me anytime. There’s nothing that would be - too much for me.”

“I know.” El smiles at him gently. “I trust you.” He knows that means a lot; her trust, after everything she’s been through, is not always easily earned.

“I trust you too.” Mike replies, softly. It sounds like it could mean something else, maybe. El kisses him on the cheek, and then asks him what he wants to do. They end up watching movies for the rest of the day, slowly churning through the tapes Mike has in his basement. They don’t speak a lot, just keep their hands intertwined. El rests her head on his shoulder. It’s enough to get him through the day.

She’s gone now, though, and so is Will, and Joyce, and Jonathan. And Hopper, but he’s - gone, gone. Not gone in the same way El was, not gone in the way she and the Byers are now. There’s no cabin in the woods secretly hiding Hop away, no other town they could visit to see him. He had a strained relationship with Hopper at times, sure, but they did genuinely care about each other. They understood each other in the way where there was no limit to what they would do for El, no task too large, no cross too heavy to bear. Hopper checked in on him, sometimes, during the year where El wasn’t there, and Mike knows it was probably out of guilt more than anything, but still. Someone Mike knew, someone Mike cared about, is dead. No second chances, no government hide-ups, no other dimensions keeping them trapped. Just dead. There wasn’t even a body. They couldn’t even have a proper funeral. 

It’s a lot to handle, on top of all of the other trauma and the general fucked up-edness of his brain, to say the least. 

And then. 

There’s.

Well.

The other fucked up part of his brain. 

The part that he barely even acknowledges to himself, let alone other people.

The part that sometimes, _sometimes,_ suspects he might like boys.

In _that_ way. 

(He sometimes makes deeply inappropriate jokes to himself that they would subject him to a whole different kind of electroshock therapy if he ever opened up about that. Joking about it takes the edge off, slightly. Not really.)

It’s not true, to say that he’s never talked about it with anyone. Technically he didn’t say he was talking about himself, but also, Will isn’t an idiot. There isn’t really anyone else he would be talking about.

It’d been a few weeks, after everything went down. The dust had settled slightly, and they were trying to create some semblance of normalcy, so the boys were at Mike’s house. They weren’t excluding the girls deliberately: Max wanted to stay at home, and El was spending the day with Joyce. Mike and Will were in the kitchen, grabbing snacks for everyone, because Dustin had gotten demanding. 

“Hey, Will?” Mike asks, trying and failing to achieve a casual tone. Again, he’s not exactly the best at disguising his feelings. 

“Yeah?” Will replies, voice deliberately calm.

“I never properly apologised. For a lot of things. But specifically for what I said when you left my house that day, when we didn’t want to play D&D. I didn’t mean it like - I just meant that you don’t have a girlfriend. But I know it came out really, really different, and really, really shitty. I’m really sorry. You know I would never - if you don’t - that’s okay. It’s not something I would ever hold against you, and if I ever did you’re fully within your rights to like, kill me, or excommunicate me from the party, or something.”

Will looks nervous, but he laughs anyway. “I know what you meant but, yeah, it still didn’t really feel great. I’m sorry too. I should really be apologising to El, I shouldn’t have called her stupid. She’s not stupid at all. I was just angry. Everyone’s just changing, and I feel like I’ve missed out. Like I’m missing out.”

“I get it.” It’s funny, how opposite they are. Will wants to go back, to live in the youth that was stolen from him. Mike wants to go forward as far as he can, to reach the point where people start treating him as maturely as he thinks he deserves. He doesn’t feel like a kid anymore, not because he isn’t, but because he can’t. He’s had too much taken from him to be able to afford that anymore. “It’s still a shitty thing to say, but I get it.”

“I thought you were apologising to me.” Will replies. “How did this get to you calling me shitty?”

Mike scoffs. “I wasn’t calling _you_ shitty. I was calling the thing you said shitty.”

“Sure.” Will laughs, and then abruptly stops. His nervous look is back. “And about - uh, what you said. It’s true, technically. I don’t -” He takes a breath, and Mike sees something steel in his eyes, and in his posture. “I don’t like girls.”

“Oh.” Mike says. He’s not shocked, exactly. But he’s not about to be a piece of shit and brag about how he saw it coming, or whatever. “Well. That’s great, man.”

Will stares at him incredulously. “‘That’s great, man’? Seriously? That’s all you have to say?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Something other than ‘that’s great man’, obviously!” They’re both laughing hysterically, suddenly, loud enough that Lucas and Dustin hear them, if the abrupt thump of footsteps is anything to go by. 

“What are you laughing about? What’s taking you so long?” Dustin asks, walking over to poke Mike in the shoulder.

“We were just, uh-”

“Sorting some things out.” Mike finishes, easily. “We’re good now.”

Lucas narrows his eyes at them slightly, but he seems to get this isn’t a topic to be pushed, because he just says “Well, good. I want to start the movie, and being alone in a room with Dustin is slowly driving me insane.”

“Hey!” Dustin exclaims, and they’re off bickering back down the stairs.

Mike stops Will just before he can follow them, a bag of chips and a bag of popcorn in either hand. “I’m, uh. I’m proud of you.”

“You don’t need to turn into a dad.” Will replies, but he does look genuinely thankful, and relieved. “But thanks. Really, thanks.”

“Anytime.” Mike replies, and they head downstairs after their friends. He thinks about it through the movie, turning it over and over in his head. Will likes boys. Will is gay. Mike doesn’t think he’s weird or wrong for that, obviously, so why does he keep thinking the same about himself? _Because you’re not gay_ , his brain tells him. _You’re just confused. You like girls. You can’t like both, and you know you like girls, so clearly there’s something wrong._ It’s all he can think about, to the point where he barely pays attention when Lucas and Dustin leave. Will clearly notices, and he looks - scared. Maybe he thinks Mike’s changed his mind, that he was lying, that he’s actually disgusted with him.

“Do you think-” Mike starts, and then stops. “Do you think that people can - that’s possible to - like boys _and_ girls?”

“Yeah.” Will says, as casually as anything. He comes out once and suddenly he’s an expert on sexuality, apparently. “I don’t see why not. I don’t think you have to only like one or the other. You can, but it’s not like, a rule, probably. That’d be a weird rule.” 

“So if someone did.” Mike says, slowly, and he knows it’s probably obvious he’s talking about himself, but his brain won’t allow him to say quite that much yet. “If someone did like both, that wouldn’t be weird. Or like, wrong.”

He doesn’t ask why Mike’s asking. Mike has never loved him more. “David Bowie likes both.” Will replies. “Jonathan told me. And David Bowie isn’t weird, or wrong.”

“Well, he’s kinda weird.” Mike says, and Will snorts. “But not because of that.” Mike’s heart is going at a rate that feels like it shouldn’t physically be possible without causing immediate death. He needs to change the subject, fast. “You know, I meant what I said. I am proud of you. I’ll be there, you know. If you ever tell anyone else. Have you told anyone else?”

“No. I think Jonathan knows though. And Mom, maybe. I think I’m okay to tell them on my own though, and El. But the guys, maybe. I don’t think they’ll respond badly, it’s still just -”

“-scary, I know.” Mike finishes, without thinking. He won’t explain why he knows, not now, and Will won’t ask him, and it’ll be okay. They’ll be okay. It's not like this conversation has singlehandedly fixed every issue Mike has in relation to his own sexuality, just as his conversation with El didn't suddenly make him perfectly mentally healthy. But it's enough, for now. Like Will somehow summoned him, Jonathan arrives soon after to pick Will up. Mike hugs him goodbye. It’d feel wrong not to, somehow. If Will’s surprised by it, he doesn’t say anything. 

And now Will’s gone. Will and El are gone, Mike feels stranded, and he knows that’s not fair. Lucas and Dustin and Max are as much his best friends as El and Will are, but. It was hard enough opening up to two people. He doesn’t know if he can be bothered to do it again. 

It feels slightly weird to be describing Max as one of his best friends, but she truly is. They had been friends before, but going through the latest ordeal had basically forced them to truly talk to each other, to push past any of the animosity that still remained between them. 

(“You know, I didn’t really think you were trying to control her.” Max had said to him, late one night, when they were having a sleepover at Dustin’s house. “I just - I get paranoid, sometimes. I saw how easily my mom’s life has been taken over by Neil. I don’t think you’re like him at all, I _know_ you’re not like him, that’s not what I’m saying, I wasn’t even thinking about you. I was just thinking about her. I’m scared for her, all the time.”

“So am I.” Mike had replied, simply. “That’s why I get so defensive. I’ve seen her disappear right in front of my eyes using her powers, I’ve seen her sacrifice herself over and over again. It’s not that I don’t trust her. I trust her more than anyone, I believe in her more than anyone, but I know her too. I know she’ll do _anything_ to protect the people she loves, even if it costs her life. I don’t want her to pay that price. I meant it when I said I can’t lose her again.”

“I know.” Max says. “I know that now.” Mike’s pretty tactile by nature, so typically he would have hugged her, or squeezed her hand, or something, but they’re lying down in sleeping bags, and she’s still pretty uneasy about physical contact that she doesn’t initiate, so he refrained, and just smiled at her, close lipped. It had been the start of something - something better.)

The point is, Max is one of his best friends now. That’s not to say they aren’t shitty with each other; they snark, and tease, and rile each other up to the point where other people probably can’t stand to be around them. But Mike would take on a Demogorgon with his bare hands if it meant keeping her safe, and aside from the occasional periods of time when his brain tells him everyone in his life hates him and he’d be better off dead, he trusts that she’d do the same for him. Sometimes, when she’s hit particularly hard with grief over Billy and Hopper and El leaving and everything that’s happened to them, she’ll call him on the Supercom and just ask him to talk. “Might as well put that big, irritating mouth to use.” She claims, but he knows how she’s feeling. It’s complicated, to want to be alone but not want to be lonely. So he talks, about anything and everything. At one point he gets into an incredibly elaborate description of his dinner, and then she gets mad at him for making her hungry.

“I’ll deny it if you tell anyone I said this, but you are quite good with words.”

“Did you just compliment me?” Mike puts a hand to his chest in faux-surprise, even though he knows she can’t see him. “Are you a clone-Max? An alien? Tell me something only the real Max would know.”

“The real Max thinks you’re a fucking moron.” Max laughs. “But seriously, have you ever considered, like, writing? Lucas has told me about some of your D&D campaigns, and they’re nerdy as hell, but they _are_ clever.”

Mike chews on his lip. “Sometimes I - I don’t know. That’d be cool, I guess. I think my dad wants me to pick up some slightly manlier hobbies, though.”

“If our school syllabus has taught me anything, it’s that books are in fact exclusively written by men.” Max lets out a long huff of breath. “My mom wants me to pick up girlier hobbies. I mentioned joining the baseball team earlier and I think she almost passed out. She’s probably getting concerned about me again, now that my only girl friend has moved out of town.”

“We just have to swap hobbies, I guess.”

“Or,” Max draws out the r. “We say fuck our parents and do what _we_ want to do.”

“That’s so much effort though.” Mike says, sighing dramatically. “I don’t think I have any energy left for good old-fashioned teenage rebellion.”

“Says the boy who hid a girl in his _basement_ from the _government_.”

“I don’t think that’s exactly rebellion as much as it is a felony.” Max snorts at that, which sets Mike off, which sets her off in turn. It’s one of those moments that makes him wish time travel was possible, if only so he could go back in time and smack himself in the head for being such a dick to Max in the past. 

“I miss her.” She says, absentmindedly, once they’ve settled down. “We talk on the phone and stuff, but it’s not the same.”

“I know.” Mike replies, twisting his fingers into the fabric of his polo shirt. “I keep getting up to go to the cabin, or call her on the Supercom or something, and then I remember she isn’t here anymore.”

“It sucks.” Max’s tone is blunt, but he can tell she is genuinely upset.

“Yeah.” He says, because that’s all he can do. “It fucking sucks.”

Max lets out a sigh. “Funny that we only really started getting along once she left, huh?”

“Well, if you didn’t conspire against me, maybe we could have been friends sooner.”

“We didn’t conspire against you, and besides, who was the one constantly telling me to fuck off when we first met?”

“You told her to dump my ass! And I apologised for that!”

“Yeah, well it still hurts me.” Max adopts a fake-teary tone. “I think about it every day, it haunts my nightmares-”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re slightly dramatic?”

Max’s voice turns from dejected to matter-of-fact within seconds. “Lucas does. All the time. I think it’s part of my charm, personally.”

“Well, personally,” Mike says, turning to lie on his side. “I think you’re the only one who thinks that.”

“Asshole.” Max scoffs, but he knows she doesn’t mean it, just as she knows he doesn’t mean what he’s saying. It’s a dynamic only the two of them truly understand, but Mike thinks that might be why it works so well. “Hey, thanks. For this. I know it’s weird-”

“It’s not weird.”

“It’s weird for me, okay? I’m not great at-” She pauses. “I’m not great at like, asking for things or whatever. Asking for help, I don’t know. But the past year has made me realise that being on my own? It fucking sucks. I don’t - I don’t wanna be alone again.”

“You won’t be.” Mike replies instantly, and though it’s something he struggles to believe for himself, he has no doubt about Max. “None of us are ever gonna leave you alone now, you know that right? This friendship is a lifetime deal only. We’re gonna be so supportive and loving you’ll end up hating us, and even then we still won’t leave you alone.” Max laughs at that, but it sounds genuinely tearful this time. “I’m serious. This - this is our family. Family always come back to each other.”

“Yeah,” Max breathes more than says, “Yeah, okay.”

“Okay.” Mike replies, definitive. “I mean, I still hate you, obviously. This means nothing.”

“Of course.” She laughs, and it’s a good, loud, hard-fought sound. “Of course, I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“Good. Just so we’re clear.”

“Crystal.”

“I should probably go to sleep before I like, pass out or something. Goodnight Max.”

“Goodnight, asshole. And hey, really, thanks.”

Mike smiles. “It’s fine. Anytime.” He puts the Supercom down and, for the first time in a long time, falls asleep easily. The next few days are kind of shitty, though, to put it lightly. He hates that it’s like this - sneaking up on him without warning. He’ll be having a completely normal day, and the next minute, he can’t move, or eat, or sleep. Nancy catches on pretty quickly, and brings him food and glasses of water, so he at least won’t die of dehydration or malnutrition while his brain seems to be dead-set on killing him anyway. 

“I’m not gonna force you to talk.” She says, after bringing him some fresh water, because he left the last glass to get stale and kind of musty. “I know how much that sucks, and besides, I’m not gonna let you treat me like shit if that’s all you feel like doing at the moment.”

“Have you ever felt like this?” Mike asks, unprompted. 

She looks surprised, but recovers quickly. “Like what?”

“Like, overwhelmed. Just by everything. It’s not even anything specific, there doesn’t seem to be a reason, it’s just - life. It seems like too much, everything seems like too much all the time, and I don’t know how to stop it.”

Nancy bites her lip, and sits down on the bed. Mike rolls so he’s lying pressed against the wall, a silent invitation for her to lie beside him. She takes it. “Not really. I have felt like that, but it was mostly because of Barb. There was an explanation for it, you know?”

“So what did you do?”

“I got justice. I got revenge. I finally got to properly acknowledge and grieve over my best friend, for the first time in a year. I got closure. But if there’s no reason for you feeling this way-”

“Then it’s pretty fucking difficult to get closure.” Nancy looks surprised to see him swearing, as if that’s the most surprising thing he’s done in the past few years, as if she hasn’t also witnessed him repeatedly take on monsters from other dimensions. “I just - I don’t know what to do. To help it. Being at school helped, sometimes, because it was a routine, it forced me to do things, but now. I don’t know. It’s so easy to just slip into this haze, you know?”

Nancy grabs for his hand under the covers, interlocks their fingers. “I want to have good advice here, but I don’t know how helpful I can be. The best I have is sometimes you have to just force yourself to do things. Even when it feels hard, even when it feels-” She takes a long breath, “Even when it feels impossible, you have to at least try. And no-one’s expecting you to be okay every day, no-one could expect any of us to be okay every day. Jonathan’s dad's gun is in a box at the top of my wardrobe, you know that? I wanted it to be under my bed, but then I got too scared thinking about Holly finding it by accident. I bought bullets for it and everything. I practice loading it and unloading it every night, just to reassure myself that if something happens, I could do something. I would do something.”

“You always do something.” Mike says, softly. “You and Jonathan fought the Demogorgon. You were the one who uncovered all the shit about the lab. You were the one who kept investigating the rats, even when you were told not to. You’re always _there,_ and you never get any credit.”

“Yeah, and you protected El. You protected Will. You protect everyone, all the time, even when people hate you for it. You might not realise it, and we might not even realise it sometimes, but we need you. All the time.” They look at each other, and suddenly they’re six and ten again, sneaking into each others rooms when they were supposed to be asleep, just to spend more time together. 

“We’re both pretty good at this, huh?”

“What, saving people from monsters, or talking about our feelings?”

“Both.” Mike says, and Nancy lets out a huff of a laugh. “Definitely both.”

Nancy squeezes his hand, and then lets go to get off the bed. “I’m not gonna tell you to get out of bed, because I know saying that when you feel like this is stupid and counter-productive, but you should try, at some point. Talk to El, maybe, or hang out with your friends. Maybe make plans to do something, it might help your brain if you have a specific task to do.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” Mike considers for a moment. “I’ll call Dustin, see if he’s busy tomorrow.”

“Good.” Nancy smiles at him, and she looks proud. Truly proud, just to see him attempt to be a functional human being. Jesus, Mike really is depressed, isn’t he. “And shower, maybe. Just a hint.” Mike just glares her out of the room, but to be fair, he knows she’s right. 

As it turns out, Dustin’s only plan for the next day was to go irritate Steve and Robin down at the movie store, so he invites Mike along easily. Mike’s been working on reaching out to Dustin more, knowing how insecure he gets about his position in his friends lives, especially now there’s only them, Max and Lucas left in Hawkins. It’s fine, now; Dustin’s relatively open, and understanding, and doesn’t have a talent for holding grudges the way the rest of them do. Mike wasn’t lying when he said Dustin was his best friend too. Reuniting with him at Starcourt that night made something fall into place, like everything felt right again, and he had barely noticed it was wrong. 

“Are you actually going to get any movies out?” Steve asks, while Dustin and Mike are browsing the shelves, but they know he doesn’t care. “Or are you trying to move here permanently?”

“Don’t tempt them.” Robin says, tapping her nails on the counter. Mike isn’t entirely sure, but he thinks Robin does actually like him. They’re kinda similar, in a weird way, and when the four of them are together it tends to turn into Steve and Dustin vs Mike and Robin. Dustin is convinced that one day it’ll turn into Steve&Robin vs Mike and Dustin, but. Mike’s seen Robin and Steve’s eyes lingering on the same girls, so. He isn’t so sure. 

“Don’t act like you aren’t feeling completely blessed by our presence, Steven.” Mike says, not even looking up from the copy of the Halloween tape he’s holding. “Hey, since we’re best friends and everything, do you think you could let us get out the R-rated tapes?”

“Well, no, because that would be _illegal._ ” Steve replies, looking completely deadpan. “You’re all still five years old as far as I’m concerned, that shit will give you nightmares for life.”

“You say this as if every day for the past two years hasn’t been an endless nightmare.” Dustin says, slamming some tapes down on the counter. “And as if you weren’t letting us literally break in to the movie theatre when you worked at Scoops.”

“Yeah, these movies are essentially light-hearted bedtime stories at this point.” Mike follows up, moving to stand beside Dustin.

“Why does anyone still live in this town?” Robin wonders aloud.

“Self-hatred?”

“Vaguely suicidal tendencies?”

“Fight or flight mode that seems to be permanently stuck on fight mode?”

Well, now they’re just describing Mike. “It makes for a good story. You know, when we leave here, we’ll be able to say we came from Hawkins, and everyone we meet will be intrigued.”

“Or they’ll think you’re a Satanist.” Robin says drily. “Isn’t that the common explanation for this town these days?”

“You know something’s seriously messed up when Satanism seems like a less weird justification for everything that’s happened than the actual truth.” Dustin sighs. He isn’t wrong. 

“Do you actually have money to pay for these? Because I’m not giving them to you for free. No level of friendship is worth me losing my job over.” Steve asks, cutting through the conversation.

Dustin looks at him incredulously. “Of course I have money. I’ve been babysitting for the Hammonds every Friday, saving up. I gotta be rich so I can take Suzie on the nicest date possible next time we see each other.”

“I thought she was part of a super-strict Mormon family who never let her out of the house.” 

“Seriously, Mike? Are you still doubting she exists? You’ve heard her speak!”

“And sing!” Robin adds, “Don’t forget sing.” Dustin pulls a truly horrific face at her. 

“I didn’t say that.” Mike claims, “I was just pointing out the flaws in your big romantic plan, Romeo.”

“Alright, Mr I-called-you-every-day-for-a-year.”

“Hey!” Mike frowns at him, and Dustin suddenly looks worried, like he thinks he’s gone too far. “It was 353 days. Get your facts straight.”

“Of course you would remember that.” Steve says. Robin looks incredibly confused. 

“Romantic shit like that is the reason he has a girlfriend and you don’t.” Dustin replies, “Maybe you should take some notes, then you could, uh-” he looks very deliberately between Steve and Robin and wiggles his eyebrows, “-have a little more success, you know.”

Robin sighs, and Mike can almost see her making a decision right then and there. Though, that doesn’t mean he isn’t surprised when she says: “Dustin, I need you to know this-” she gestures between her and Steve, “-is absolutely never going to happen. Ever.”

“Why not? Is it his hair? He can change it!”

“I like girls.” She says it firmly, but her eyes betray her anxiety. “I’m a lesbian. A different hairstyle isn’t exactly what I’m looking for.”

Dustin blinks. Processes. Opens his mouth, and then closes it, and then opens it again to say: “So you’re saying I have to find _both_ of you girlfriends now? Really? It’s hard enough trying to find one for Steve. He’s a disaster.”

Steve’s mouth gapes open. “Robin seriously just opened up to you like that and you still manage to insult me? Classy, Henderson.”

“Am I wrong?”

“Well, you’re wrong on one thing, technically.” Steve runs a hand through his hair, shakes it out faux-casually. “It wouldn’t - you wouldn’t necessarily have to find me a _girl_ friend. I could, you know, work with either.”

“Same,” Mike says, before he even thinks about it, and all three of them turn to him in surprise. “I mean, obviously I don’t want, or need you to find me anyone. I’m pretty set on El. We all know this. But, you know. In a hypothetical sense, girls and boys are both. Good? I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Bisexual.” Robin says, suddenly, the first of them to snap out of their shock. “That’s what it’s called. I did a lot of research when I was like, fifteen and going through my first big crisis. The more you know!”

Something about hearing both Robin and Steve talk about this openly, hearing Robin use that specific term, settles something in Mike’s chest. Gives him a sense of calm he didn’t know he needed until now. “I guess, yeah. I’m bisexual.” Steve puts his fist up for Mike to bump, and Dustin wraps an arm around his shoulder, and he looks like he’s never been more proud of Mike. He doesn’t know why it’s taken him so long to open up to him about this, about anything; this is Dustin, his best friend, who has the biggest heart in the world, and who has never taken his bullshit, and who he willingly jumped off a cliff for. He loves him, loves all of them, in his own weird way, in the way you love people you’ve experienced the end of the world with. Intensely. Without end. He doesn’t want this feeling to end, but he knows that it will. Knows he’ll have days where he wakes up angry at the world, apathetic to his friends, distant from his life. But they’ll be there, still, when he snaps out of it. He has to remember that, no matter what.

“Working with you sure does turn every day into an adventure, Harrington.” Robin says, but she gives Mike a quick, warm smile. 

“You know it.” Steve winks at her. Dustin smacks him with his free hand, because “seriously, what did I tell you about the damn winking?”, and just like that, the moment is over. It actually be that easy, to be open about yourself and your emotions. Who fucking knew? Not Mike, that’s for certain. 

They say goodbye, and end up seeing Lucas and Max on the way back to Dustin’s house. Max is holding onto a rope attached to the back of Lucas’ bike, and she’s riding her skateboard, something which Mike honestly cannot see ending well, but they seem to be doing okay so far. 

“What do you have there?” Max calls, knuckles white around the rope.

“Poltergeist!” Dustin shouts back, “and ET, in case Mike gets too scared.”

Max laughs at that, and Mike scowls. “Says the person who couldn’t watch The Shining without covering their face.”

“Hey! Stephen King is no joke.”

“Alright, settle down children.” Lucas calls from ahead of them, and Dustin and Mike both turn their scowls towards him, which only serves to make Max laugh harder. They manage to make it to Dustin’s house without incident, and Lucas and Max decide to come hang out with them. They don’t even end up watching the movies, just talking and playing games and listening to music, and it’s good. It’s a good day. Mike is grateful for the good days. 

He decides to go use Cerebro, with Dustin’s permission, and prays that El will pick up. He could use his phone at home, but for all that his relationship with his mom has improved over the past few months, she does still have an unfortunate tendency to stay on the phone, and he would prefer she didn’t hear this conversation. 

“El? Are you there?”

There’s a beat. 

“El?”

“Mike!” Suddenly, she’s there, voice bright even through the radio. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no no no no. Everything’s fine, I promise. I just - I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh.” She says, soft. “About something? Or just talk?”

“Uh.” Mike takes a breath. This is El. His girlfriend. He loves her. He trusts her. This is okay. This is fine. He is fine, and his sexuality is fine, and it’s all fine, and also continuously describing things as fine makes them seem very much not fine, but that’s - fine. “About something, actually. Something good! It’s good, I promise. I just - found something out about myself today.”

“So tell me.” She says.

And so he does.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! three things i didn't touch on as much as i wanted to in this: mike's relationship with lucas and karen and also hopper's death. hopper's death just well. made me too fucking sad and so i didn't want to go into it too much. and there is literally a note on my phone that says "find way to incorporate lucas more i miss my fucking son" and somehow i managed to. not do it even though he is one of my Favourite characters anyway i'm a moron and i'm going to stop ranting now 
> 
> but also i know the way mike handled these issues + the way they were handled in general by other characters is probably ~unrealistic~ but also i'm. not really into subjecting my favourite characters to homophobia so i have decided that every likeable character in this show did in fact throw the first brick at stonewall! sorry! like/subscribe/merch link in bio etc etc
> 
> also i'm on twitter @biwheeelers if you want to be subjected to me just. being irritating and sad about mike and the gang then hmu i guess.


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